Removing Lotus Elise (111R) Steering
Arm Shims
Standard
Disclaimer: ANY USE OF THIS INFORMATION BY
YOU IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. I ASSUME NO LIABILITY FOR YOUR USE OF THE BELOW
INFORMATION.
Why do
this? To gain negative camber for better steering response, of course. Some LotusTalk threads I reviewed prior were these:
http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f91/coilover-swap-out-camber-change-piece-cake-6697/ <-- some relative posts
http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f259/took-out-my-shims-99875/
Some tools
I used to accomplish this:
·
3/8
socket wrench
·
3/8
socket handle
·
3/8
torque wrench
·
8mm
HEX 3/8 socket
The B jack
point is used to lift the side of the car being worked on with a low profile
jack- I (and others) would encourage the use of jack stands. After the jack was
just starting to lift the car, I broke the lug nuts all loose before jacking the
rest of the way and removing the lug nuts and wheel:
In the
picture below you can see the steering arm and the HEX bolts that will need to
be removed to remove the shim(s).
By turning
the steering wheel to full lock left/right the front and rear HEX bolts are
EASILY accessed:
On some
Elise/Exige models the front can be loosened and only
the rear HEX bolt removed but my shims had to be difficult- I had to remove
both bolts. The key was removing one bolt at a time, getting that end of the
shim out of the way, applying blue thread lock to the bolt, putting the bolt
back in and loosely tightening, and then doing the same for the other bolt to
remove the shim. If the steering arm gets out of line it is easily moved by
hand to realign and start bolt. Every car is different, mine only had one shim
on each side but different cars can have different sized shims and one or many
that can vary side to side. The ABS wiring holder also acts as a shim, I left
mine installed but some remove this and zip tie it out
of the way:
With shim
removed it is time to torque the HEX bolts to spec, in my case with the 10.9
grade bolts it was 68 Nm or ~50 ft/lbs:
